Gherardini Could Wind up in NY
“…D’Antoni’s connection to the Raptors’ front office goes back nearly 20 years, to when he coached in Italy and his boss was Maurizio Gherardini, , who works under Raptors president Bryan Colangelo. Colangelo gave D’Antoni his big break in Phoenix following D’Antoni’s brief and unsuccessful run as coach of the Denver Nuggets.
Gherardini could emerge as a possible GM candidate in New York. Team president Donnie Walsh is not ruling out adding another executive to his staff. Walsh and Colangelo met before Wednesday night’s game.
Last season, I had Gherardini on top of my list of presidents after Isiah Thomas, and mentioned it in an article I wrote for RealGM.com. Dolan chose Walsh, which I think was very wise, but adding the man who owns Europe from a basketball standpoint would help the Knicks tremendously.
“…Basketball is different now in Toronto, however, thanks in most part to Colangelo, who has twice been named NBA executive of the year himself, in 2005 and most recently, last season after leading the Raptors to nearly 50 wins. Perhaps Colangelo’s best move over the last few years, aside from trading Charlie Villanueva for T.J. Ford, was to hire Maurizio Gherardini.
For those in the basketball know, Gherardini is the most influential voice in European basketball. Upon returning to his native Italy following a visit to the United States as an exchange student, Gherardini began the organization of basketball camps as well as clinics and also prepared the first ever coaches clinic in Europe. That coaches clinic brought such NBA legends as Bob McAdoo, Hubie Brown and Bill Walton to Italy. Gherardini turned Benetton Treviso into a European superpower, captaining them to four league championships (1997, 2002, 2003 and 2006), three Italian “Supercups” (1997, 2001 and 2002), made four appearances in the Euroleague’s final four.
His knowledge of the game ranks among the world’s best, and as one NBA executive put it, to have Gherardini, means to have Europe. The question now becomes, is the NBA ready for a European executive. Well, it almost was in 2003 when Gherardini was interview for the GM position with the Charlotte Bobcats, finishing second to Bernie Bickerstaff.
All you have to do is open your eyes to see that around the world the game has changed. United States-born players have their hands full during International competitions and the production of European talent is just getting started. Let’s face it, if a European player can be taken first overall in the NBA draft, European executives are soon to follow and the Knicks can’t pass up an opportunity on one. And judging from the success that the Spurs have had since adding Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, in addition to the successes of Dirk Nowitzki, Yao and Pao Gasol, it’s easy to see that there is talent around the world- not just in the inner city of Chicago…”
Needless to say this with the direction the game is headed, this would be a superlative move by Donnie Walsh.
